von has acquired a horseshoe crab, picture forthcoming, when he cleans out the creature, which i hope you've realised, isn't alive anymore. he wishes me to say it was given him by john r. stilgoe, robert & lois orchard professor in the history of landscape. so now you all know.

while i'm on professors, i got up the guts to approach professor rita felski this morning. i wouldn't have if not for standing outside her door trying to see when her office hours when suddenly the door swung open and i had no choice but to say, hello professor. so i make an appointment to go talk to her on tuesday afternoon about grad schools, which makes me terrified as anything. i have never spoken more than 20 words to her all the time i was in her class and afterwards, and at least two-thirds of those were of the good afternoon variety. eeek. she is one formidable woman and she sends me into stuttery rabbit mode. argh. later i went to office hours to talk to professor john o'brien about chicago. he was there till about 8 years ago. i am much less keen on it now. basically, it's supposed to be russian winters and gloom and dooming, super-intense people taking their intellectual life very seriously, who are perpetually grumpy and unhappy and enjoying being grumpy and unhappy, who are heavily competitive and professionalised, where people scream and rage at each other, all of which prof o'brien misses in our ultra-polite department with the southern-gentility-personified faculty in our small town university, but which i dread. also, there are only 2 medievalists there, and 5 or 6 rennaissance folks, who all do not like each other, so that's another minus. the advantages, he says, are chicago itself. and a truly interdisciplinary approach. i'm thinking that doesn't sound happy enough for me though, and doctor zhivago's forever put any liking for the cold out of my soul, so "terrible winters" just aren't my kind of thing.

i was thinking about thurber's thirteen clocks last night, and the wonderful golux's parting words as he puts prince zorn and princess saralinda onto their white horses: "keep warm. ride close together. remember laughter. you'll need it even in the blessed isles of ever after." well maybe you had to be reading it, but it seemed like the warmest, loveliest blessing anyone could bestow. i hope someone says that to me one day.